


A Delicate Instrument

by Shush_MummyWriting



Series: Lost Time [1]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: AU, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-18
Updated: 2014-04-18
Packaged: 2018-01-19 20:46:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1483321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shush_MummyWriting/pseuds/Shush_MummyWriting
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The cello is played with fingers wrapped around the neck and a bow, drawn across the strings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Delicate Instrument

Phil was paying more attention to his dreams. He now knew Tahiti was a fiction – a buffer between reality and the truth. He was alive but shouldn’t be. 

He liked being alive but the edges of the pain (so much pain) sometimes intruded, during the day and especially at night. 

Skye had presumed to ask after his classical music CDs. He didn’t have any. She had looked embarrassed, as if she understood not wanting to be reminded of the empty spaces in your life. But that wasn’t right.

He now wondered if the images he saw in that shadow land between rest and life, held more than imagination or fantasy. Were they memories, trying to come back? What could be so important?

He dreamt of the Cellist – straight posture, strong hands, sure on a delicate instrument. That image he knew. 

The sound of fingers moving on a string but ... was that music? 

Felt again the touch of hard callus, the reminder of long hours of practice. But it was like they were an imperfect echo, a picture made of pieces torn from something else and incomplete, like a collage a child would make from the images in a magazine. An approximation of what should be.

He saw a firm grip on the neck of a cello. The grip was right but the curves of the instrument were wrong. The curves drifted in his dream, like a Dali painting.

He watched the clench of muscles across shoulders, transmitted to arms. The split second from intent to action. The strength. The movement. He saw fingers clenched on a bow.

A Bow.

As he swam upwards through these jumbled images, he realised his own voice had woken him. His mouth held the muscle memory of the sound still. As the images steadied, like his heart beat, he let his mouth make the sound again. His ears, his heart knew that name.

“Clint”

**Author's Note:**

> Unbetaed, all mistakes are my own.  
> Constructive comment are always welcome.


End file.
